CHAPTER XVI.

HELPLESS AND HOPELESS.

The arm of the law is strong--it crushes hope out of a man’s life sometimes, in the worst class of prisons. In a reform school it deals even more strictly than in a penitentiary, for here boyish shrewdness is feared fully as much as more matured plotting.

The institution in which Dean Mercer found himself to be a prisoner was noted for its severe regime.

Once its doors closed on a convict the warden claimed that by the legalized act he became dead to the outside world.

Until his term expired he was entombed alive, and the four solid granite walls that encompassed the place shut him in to all the world he was to know until released.

They were used to protestations, threats, misrepresentations at the place, and even had Dean told his entire story no one would have believed him.

“I am innocent,” a prisoner would say.

“Ah! indeed?”

“Unjustly sent here.”

“Sorry; but we are not a court of inquiry. We don’t try your case.”

“The judge was bribed to send me here.”

“Can’t help it. You’re here. Our duty is to see that you stay here until your term expires.”

And that ended it.

Or----

“Can I write a letter to friends?”

“On letter day.”

“It is important.”

“On letter day.”

And that ended it, too.

The first night Dean Mercer slept in the narrow, confined cell to which he was apportioned, he thought he would go mad with anxiety.

He had always led a free, roving life. Imprisonment was torture.

Worst of all, he was unjustly incarcerated, and he saw that he was unable to send word to friends.

He now knew for a certainty that he was the victim of a plot, and the possible object and results tormented him.

He chafed and wept, and the grim, silent walls seemed to mock his misery.

Toward morning he slept a few brief moments, and, wearied and depressed, he heard the bell ring to announce that a new day of work had begun.

“Hold your cell door when locking, push it open at the signal,” sternly ordered a guard to Dean.

The convicts, some six hundred of them, were marched to a room with long tables.

As they passed them by, each boy would seize a large cup containing coffee, and as much bread as he cared for.

Then, returning to their cells, they would dispatch this rude breakfast.

Half an hour later they formed in line, and were marched to the different shops. Dean was taken with a gang of seventy to the oakum sheds.

Here a guard with a heavy cane kept a cat-like watch over the boys under his charge.

Dean did as he saw the others do, and worked as a welcome deviation from monotony, to occupy his mind.

Finally some visitors passed by. Dean chanced to glance at them as they passed on.

“Number 301,” spoke the guard, sternly.

“Yes, sir.”

“You looked up just now?”

Dean looked guilty.

“Next offence--the solitary.”

That was dreadful. All that day, when not working, the convicts were required to fold their arms and sit with eyes cast down on the ground.

That night Dean was glad to get to his cell. He was tired, and slept well, and he began to count the days intervening before letter day.

Then he would write to his friends and tell them of his strange imprisonment.

Ah! they would soon come to the rescue. He would be free, and his enemies discovered and punished, as soon as Judge Oglesby or Lawyer Montague knew of his whereabouts.

The next day Dean was removed to a new field of usefulness. He welcomed the change gladly, for the occupation was more varied and congenial.

There was a large garden fenced in near the warden’s house, and here he and four other boys were set at work weeding, pruning and transplanting.

There was no guard here. Only the sentinel on the wall above kept an occasional watch over them.

Dean thrilled, as about noon the first friendly voice he had heard since entering those gloomy walls fell on his ears.

A boy near him, while pretending to be tying up a rose-bush, spoke in a low tone to Dean.

“You’re the new one!” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“Thought so. 301?”

“That’s my number.”

“What are you in for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh! pshaw.”

“I don’t; they call it larceny or burglary, but I didn’t steal anything, or break into anybody’s house.”

“Didn’t larce?” chuckled the boy.

“No, I didn’t!”

“Nor burgle?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Come off the perch! What are you giving me? You look a regular tough one.”

This conversation, slangy and careless, disheartened Dean.

His next prison acquaintance struck him more favorably. He proved to be a pale-faced, sad-looking boy, who whispered to Dean as the guard walked down the wall, and they were unobserved.

“Ain’t you cell 44?”

“I think so,” responded Dean.

“I thought so. Are you onto the ventilator?”

“The ventilator?” asked Dean in surprise. “What about the ventilator?”

“It’s up in the corner. You can take it out and talk to the boy in the next cell. I used to have that cell, and I tell you it was mighty fine to be able to say a word or two without being sent to solitary.”

“Who’s in the next cell?” asked Dean.

“Don’t know. He’s a new one. Escaped from some institution, and was caught and brought here.”

“How do you work the ventilator?”

“It lifts out. Hist! The guard is watching us.”

After supper that night Dean sat on his bunk until the guard had passed. Then he carefully lifted out the ventilator and peered into the tin aperture.

“Hist!” he whispered.

There was no response, and again he called, this time a trifle louder. Then he heard a slight sound in the next cell, and a low voice asked:

“What is it? Who calls?”

“Take out your ventilator,” said Dean, “and then we can talk.”

The other boy fumbled at the ventilator in the next cell and presently succeeded in removing it. Dean, who was peering through the dark hole, managed to make out dimly a face at the other end of the opening.

“Hello,” said the unknown.

“Hello,” replied Dean, “thought you might like to talk a little. It’s pretty lonely here.”

“Who are you?” asked the other boy.

“My name is Dean Mercer.”

“What! Dean Mercer? How came you here Dean?” cried the unknown, raising his voice to a dangerous pitch in his evident excitement.

“And who are you?” asked Dean quickly realizing that he was talking with some one who knew him.

“I’m Marcus Ellison!”

It was only by a great effort that Dean kept from crying out in surprise.

“Marcus,” he whispered. “How came you here?”

“I was shanghaied and turned over to the police as a boy who had made his escape from some reformatory, and I have not been able to make anyone listen to me.”

“It’s the same way with me.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t know?” said Marcus in surprise.

“No. I went to sleep on the _Spray_, and the next thing I knew I was bound hand and foot in a wagon. Two men whom I didn’t know were in the wagon, and one of them forced me to drink some stuff that put me to sleep again. When I came to I was in this cell.”

“Strange. And you do not know who is responsible?”

“No; as I say, I did not know the men who had me captive.”

“I don’t care so much about myself, but it is a shame that I should have lost those papers and money of father’s,” said Marcus.

“You lost them?”

“They were stolen from me by the men who captured me.”

“But they were officers, weren’t they?”

“No. They pretended to recognize me as the boy who had escaped, and they turned me over to an officer and claimed the reward for my capture. Hist! I think I hear the guard coming. We better quit talking for to-night. It would be too bad to have them find out the ventilator scheme. Want a paper?”

“A paper?”

“Yes, a newspaper.”

“I thought they only let you read the library books?”

“One of the boys who works in the warden’s house manages to swipe a paper now and then, and we pass it around. This is the Millville _Journal_, and it may interest you. I got it from the next cell to-day, and have not had a chance to look at it yet. But I am in no hurry, and it will interest you more than it will me.”

“Thank you.”